St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1887-06-11
A Man Chooses Claim in Dakota With
out Consulting the United States
Land Officers.
He Surveys the Field Silently and eau
ticusiy and Settles on q Piece
That Suits Him,
But is Likely to Find That it Has Been
Proved Upon or Belongs to a
Railroad.
The Remarkably Peculiar Vehicle on
Which he Hauled a Quantity of Lum-
Der to His E!dOrado.

To town short distance west of
Mandan, on the Northern Pacific rail-
road, there came few weeks ago man
who gave his name, though with some
reluctance, as Kampf. He brought with
him seven trunks, most of them heavy,
and all shielding within their capacious
recesses nobody knows what. The good
people of the neighborhood have done
wonderful amount of guessing as to
what was inside those trunks, but so far
with no avail. To all outward appear
anees Kampf was well ''fixed." He
asked nobody for loan or for credit.
He paid weeks board at the hotel in
advance. Some of the natives who had
the most time and inclination to conjec-.
ture as to the affairs of their neighbours,
said that he was a detective-or that he
was a very wisel man on the lookout for
gold or diamonds or natural gas or oil.
He was the most reticent man who ever
struck the town. Although foreigner,
who to all appearances had not
he was able to converse in En-.
glish fairly well. But frequently when
pressed with questions that he desired
not to answer, he would say: 81 don't
know what you mean" Kampf took
long and solitary walks. One night he
Strayed away and returned at an early
hour in the morning when the air was
dark as pitch and
A HURRICANE WAS BLOWING. i.
But he acted as though this was part
OF programme that he had to carry
out, and he was determined to carry it
out with as philosophical an air as pos
sible. One morning Kampf went to the
local lumber yard, situated about half
or dozen pieces OF SiXteen-foot boards.
He took with him to the
lumber yard "a couple of
spokeless wheels, each about one foot
in diameter, strongly resembling the
pictures of the wheels that the Romans
used to use in their chariotS. He then
took rope three feet in length, tied
knot in one end, strung the wheels on
the rope. and knotted the other end.
Then pulling the wheels as far apart as
they would come he lay the lumber on
the rope axle and hauled his lumber to
the hotel. Two whole days he spent
with some miserable tools that he
brought with him cutting up this lum-
Der. He declined the loan of better
tools from people who regretted his
arduous efforts in cutting up his lum-
Der. Early on the morning following
his second day of labor he loaded his
lumber on his queer little chariot and
set Off in a nOrtheaSterly direction.
Somebody dragged out of him the in
formation that he had found piece of
land on which was no occupant, and he
was going out there to take possession
of the land. A farmer who lived in the
direction of the supposed
FORSAKEN CLAIM,
told him that he was going home in an
hour, and that he would give him lift
with his lumber. No? The traveller
would go alone. When the farmer over
took Kampf he was mile out of town
and he had eight more miles to go. The
fact is that this man had been informed
before coming to Dakota that he must
keep everything to himself; that sure
and certain ruin will follow him if he
tells anybody a thing There is every
reason to believe that the claim he has
selected has been proved up on, or it :,
may be railroad land. He finds it con-
trary to his principles to take into his
confidence the gentlemen who are run
ming things at the United States land
Office. They might rob him or in some
other way get ahead of him. He pro-
poses to hoe his own corn and row his
own canoe. He is a queer specimen,
and some day when he finds that he has
made big mistake, he will return to
his native country and tell his brethren
what an awful land this is.